Keenan Recycling expand operations

Local firm Keenan Recycling has expanded its waste recycling operation in to Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The company have secured a £2.2m investment from Business Growth Fund an independent company providing growth capital for small and mid-sized businesses.

Account manager, Claire Keenan & managing director, Grant Keenan

The family run firm opened a base at Linlithgow in August and invested £700,000 in a new fleet of six lorries to service the needs of their 600 clients. The investment from Business Growth Fund will help the company expand its operations in the central belt where they hope to be working with more than 1000 clients by the end of 2015.

Keenan Recycling managing director, Grant Keenan said

This investment from BGF will allow us to speed up our expansion in the Central Belt and help even more customers to reduce the cost of dealing with their waste. With the support of our business development manager Claire Keenan, we’ve developed an experienced team and seen the business grow across the Central Belt in recent months allowing us to deliver our collection service throughout the whole of Scotland.

Account manager at Keenan Recycling, Claire Keenan, said

We are delighted to be working with our partners in the central belt to expand our services to a wider area. The new office is geographically well situated and allows us to strengthen our service in the central belt.

Our staff already make collections over a vast area – from Stonehaven in the south to Tain in the north – and we are looking forward to growing the business in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Keenan Recycling which began in 2010, process 60,000 tonnes of green waste from their own client base and local authorities at their 14 acre site at New Deer, near Turriff. The company have won awards for recycling food, garden and other organic waste into compost for agricultural and horticultural use. As well as reducing landfill the compost also reduces the need for chemical fertilisers.

New waste regulations introduced in 2014 mean that all local councils have to collect food waste and all businesses that produce more than 50kg a week can’t send their leftover food to landfill sites. Keenan Recycling have seen their client base more than treble in size since January 2014.

Business Growth Fund will have a minority equity stake in Keenan Recycling and have appointed Jim Clark, the founder of MSIS, an oil and gas waste management company, will join the board as Chairman.

Richard Pugh, investor at BGF, added

We have tracked Keenan Recycling for several years and have been impressed by how they have built a highly successful business with consistent growth of more than 30 per cent per annum.

The market backdrop continues to be supportive, with the Scottish Government committed to the tightest recycling targets in the UK, culminating in zero organic waste to landfill by 2021.

The management team, led by Grant and Gregor Keenan have demonstrated that they can help local authorities and businesses meet these targets, with market leading levels of service. The business has won numerous business and environmental awards in recent years to support their position as the leading organic waste recycling business in Scotland.

Now is the right time to invest as the business is expanding rapidly to meet demand in the Central Belt, and to prepare for further tightening of regulations in January 2016